A DELICATE PALATE.

Rangitikei Advocate and Manawatu Argus, Volume XXXIV, Issue 9440, 10 May 1909, Page 6

A DELICATE PALATE.

The Whisky Commission now' sitting in England has been the means of eliciting some interesting information about the business cf wine tasting. The War Office employs as taster a London wine merchant, who is obliged to taste samples from bottles with labels covered, so that he may have no information as to the variety and maker of the wine. He is “liquor wise’’ by inherited knowledge and a lifetime of study and application. His family have been wine merchants for generations, and he himself has been in tbe trade over fifty years. The taste of the expert in the* case of brandy is, he declares, moresubtle than the tests of the chemist. “The chemist can ascertain what a sample of brandy contains, but he* cannot discover what it will taste? like. Between two brandies of different class analysis would detect; differences, but between two brandies of the same class, one of’ which was of a better vintage, the differences would be too subtle forthe chemist to detect.” This man’s* palate can not only detect the presence of the smallest quantity of" plain spirit in tbs pure grape product, Jbut can estimate the proportion of the adulterant. He can tell at once by his delicate sense of taste and smell what country a sample of brandy comes from, and he claim a that he never makes a mistake. Ho tastes only in tbe morning when the palate is fresh, and when about to taste he foregoes his morning smoke. Of the exactitude of the palate test this expert gives a curious illustration. He was called in to make a valu .tion of a large wine merchant’s sfock of wines and spirits of many kinds, and his valuation came to between £15,000 and £16,000. He found afterwards that another eminent expert had previously made a-. separate examination, and that the two valuations varied by less than a hundred pounds. He derives an exquisitive pleasure from a perfect; bottle of wine, but suffers agony when from politeness or complacency he is compelled to drink a glass of mediocre wine of which the ordinary palate might approve.